Womanizer or, The Center of the Tension
by Morte Rouge
Summary: Oneshot. Based off of the Britney Spears song and inspired by CaptainLadyAce's PatF music video on YouTube. Tiana gets an eyeful; Naveen gets an earful.


"Almost there...hmm, hm hm..."

Tiana's half-singing, half-humming was accented by the clink and clank of dishes and silverware on the trays she piled onto her forearm. Funny, she would have thought the prosaic sounds would have jarred the tune, but no; they fitted in rather musically. Still humming, Tiana tapped a spoon rhythmically against a plate. "People gonna come from hum hm hmm, an' I'm al..."

TWANG, TWANGA TWANG, TWANGA TWANG, TWANGA TWANGA TWANGA

"...ugh." Tiana wrinkled her nose in disgust as she carried the soiled trays into the kitchen. Clearly, someone was coming down the road with one of those darn ukuleles. Sure, they were new, and popular, and from exotic Hawaii, and all, but Tiana personally despised ukuleles. Something about their high-pitched, twanging chords sent a gritty chill down her back like some people got from porcelain rasping, or from chalk on a chalkboard. Give Tiana a mellow, pretty-sounding guitar any day.

But Tiana ventured back out into the sunlight with a bucket of soapy water and a rag anyways, feeling pretty secure.

TWANGA TWANGA TWANG TWANG

Tiana squeezed her eyes shut. She'd hoped the ukulele player, whoever it was, would've been going DOWN the street, AWAY from Tiana. No such luck. The sound was coming closer. She scrubbed blindly away at the table. Maybe if she kept her eyes shut tight, the sound of the ukulele, and the person playing it, would GO AWAY!

And then a miracle happened._ The ukulele music_ (if it could be called music) _stopped._

Breathing a sigh of relief, Tiana opened her big brown eyes wide - and jumped about a foot into the air in surprise.

There in front of her was a man. Holding a ukulele. Of course he was holding a ukulele. He was dressed unremarkably, except that he was wearing a sweater vest and a tweed cap despite the muggy New Orleans spring air (_How is he not dying?_ Tiana felt sorry for him until she remembered he was the villainous ukulele player). Tiana noticed all of these things very quickly. Oh, and he was overwhelmingly handsome too, but Tiana was made of sterner stuff than most of the fool girls in New Orleans, and anyways the real noticeable thing about the man's face was that, probably because her eyes had been closed, he was looking at her like she was a crazy person, or something.

Crazy! This from a man who had stopped so abruptly to stare at HER, that his leg was still in the air, waiting to take a step. Away from her. _Oh, please, continue,_ she groaned inwardly.

He didn't.

Was luck just not on her side today?

This had gone through Tiana's brain very quickly too, so quickly that the man had noticed nothing (else) odd; and, seeing that Tiana was finally looking back at him, he flashed a wide, impossibly white grin at her.

He was obviously very full of himself. He thought she was cuckoo. And he played ukulele. With these thoughts in mind, Tiana bestowed upon the smiling man a disdainful frown.

He cocked an eyebrow, (put his foot down), turned towards her, and swept a burlesque bow - nearly clocking Tiana with the darn ukulele in the process. "Forgive me, fair lady," he cooed in heavily accented English; "I have not yet introduced myself properly. I...am Prince Naveen...of Maldonia."

That explained the big, fat, overinflated head on his shoulders. Of COURSE he was a prince. "Charmed," Tiana replied flatly, and swabbed her rag around in the soapy water.

For some reason, she was startled when the prince missed her sarcasm. "Wonderful! Now, can I interest you in a drink in this cafe behind you?"

Tiana uttered a short laugh, half-amused and half-amazed. "Um, how about no?"

.:..:..:.

Naveen was flabbergasted. (Not that "flabbergasted" was a word he knew, but had he had that much of a command of English, or indeed of Maldonian, he would probably have considered it fitting.) "Why not? I assure you, I am very funny. And charming. And handsome," he tacked on; he couldn't resist. Just in case she had not noticed. Which was a ridiculous thought, because how could any girl not notice the handsomeness of Prince Naveen? He had not opened a dictionary since he was a child, but he was sure that in the Maldonian editions, at least, there were pictures of himself next to "handsome," "beautiful," "charming," etc.

Realizing he was grinning at his reflection in the cafe window, he hastily directed his attention back to the girl. Girls did not like it if you looked at anyone else, when you were with them. They wanted to be the...how did they say in English? The center of the tension?

"Ha," the girl sniggered again, clearly giggling, because she was more stunned by his unfailing charm and looks than she was willing to let on. So she was going to play hard-to-get, eh? "Ha!" she repeated. "Okay. First of all, I don't have drinks with strange men. Second, I don't have drinks with CONCEITED men. And third, I WORK here, mister."

"Your Highness," Naveen corrected her irritably, his interest swiftly fading at the realization that she was little more than a paid _servant_. Though he grinned again, so she couldn't tell. "Well, waitress, you must excuse me then. I have an heiress to court.

"Charlotte La Bouff, here I come!" he said, half to himself, tuning his ukulele.

.:..:..:.

Tiana was almost speechless with rage. Between the ukulele notes and this, this prince's last comment, though, "almost" was the key word. If she HAD been speechless, her next, eloquent words would not have tumbled out before the prince sauntered away: "Ex_cuse_ me?"

"Huh?" The prince turned back to her. Languidly. Tiana huffed.

"Did you say you're gonna court Lottie? Nuh-uh. You leave her alone." Tiana jabbed a threatening finger into the prince's chest - then quickly drew it back, surprised at her own vehemence.

The prince, too, looked shocked. But he recovered quickly, smirking down at her. (Tiana wished she was not quite so short.) "You? A waitress? Are telling me? A prince? What to do?"

"Yes. Yes, I am," Tiana repeated, to drive the point home to the prince as much as to herself. "Lottie's my best friend, and you aren't gonna do NOTHING to her. No courting, no drinking, no talking, no NOTHING."

"And why not?"

"Cause I know what you are."

"What I am?" A look of false innocence?!

"What you are," she repeated. Tiana had read the newspaper that morning, even if Lottie had only been interested in the prince's picture to put on her dressing table. And she might be out of the social rounds her friends - both circles of friends, rich and poor - made, but even she'd heard the salacious rumors about the Maldonian prince. "You, you woman...izer," she spluttered (was that even a word? Did it matter, when it was creating such a satisfying expression of shock on the prince's face?), "you can play all those women out there like you're innocent, or turned over a new leaf, or WHATEVER, but you aren't gonna play Lottie that way, and you haven't played me. And maybe you got all those girls out there on your string like puppets, but I don't care about them, it's Lottie you're after for sure, and it's Lottie I'm gonna protect from you."

.:..:..:.

What on earth was a "womanizer"? Naveen didn't have the faintest idea. But it had "woman" in it, and the waitress looked like she was going to rip his head off in a moment, so she was probably criticizing his amorous adventures, especially this new one with Charlotte La Bouff; "Lottie," the waitress called her. The waitress said Lottie was her best friend, but could a best friend get in the way of true love?

Naveen thought this was an excellent point for his brilliant mind to have thought of. "You may be Miss La Bouff's best friend, waitress, but can a best friend get in the way of true love?"

The waitress snorted in contempt. "Why, you - you aren't capable of true love!"

"But your Lottie is?" he smirked.

She gaped, quite satisfyingly. "You wouldn't dare - "

"Yes? Dare what?" he prompted tauntingly.

"You - I - you! You, you disgusting...slimy...FROG!" she screeched.

.:..:..:.

Despite her rage, Tiana was afraid she had gone too far when her screech caused the prince to cover his ears ostentatiously. She could feel the stares of cafe customers on her back, too. He peered out at her from between his cupped hands, his anxious look from before even more acute. "You're crazy," he stated simply.

"If I'M crazy, it's because I got YOUR crazy, just talking to you, you waste of space!" she hissed.

He still had his hands over his ears, but Tiana could tell he understood - no, the right word was _heard_ - every word. "If you are trying to swear at me, please, do not hold back."

"Oh, no," Tiana answered, glaring at him hard enough to burn a hole in the skull of a smaller-headed, thinner-skulled man. "I'm not that sort of girl. I don't swear, and I'm not gonna sink to your low level."

"Whatever." The prince shrugged, picking up his ukulele again, and beginning to walk away. "Shirt yourself, waitress."

"SUIT yourself. It's SUIT yourself," she called automatically after him.

"I know that," he called back, smirking again. "I simply distracted you so that you would not be able to yell at me after I had walked around the - " he walked around the corner, and, presumably, made a run for it.

"You - !" Tiana nearly bit her tongue off in anger, recalling he could no longer hear her, or care if he did. Oh, well. The point was, she was just going to have to keep that Prince Naveen away from Lottie. It wouldn't be that difficult.

.:..:..:.

At the same time, Naveen was strolling along, strumming his ukulele again. He was out of range of the angry waitress, and hopefully out of old Laurence's range, too. Well, all he had to do now was charm his way into Charlotte La Bouff's heart - and keep her waitress friend out of the way in the meantime. It wouldn't be that difficult.


End file.
